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Mirror Therapy

Phantom limb is a term for an amputated limb, a limb which a person has lost. People with an amputated limb often experience phantom pain, which is pain in the missing limb. This pain can be very excruciating but, fortunately, Vilayanur Ramachandran and colleagues have developed a treatment for it called mirror therapy. Patients positition the limb that they still have, in the mirror so it is reflected to the other side, appearing as though the amputated limb is still there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL_6OMPywnQ

This video is about a man who lost his right leg while serving in the war in Iraq. He says that the pains he experiences in his amputated limb are like he is getting stabbed between his toes with a knife, in the arch of his foot or heel, when your big toe is crossed over your second toe, or when you cut your toe nail too short and your sock pulls on it. For this man, sitting with a mirror in between his legs, reflecting his intact leg and foot, is his mirror therapy. As he moves his foot and looks in the mirror at the reflection, he says that it feels like he is really moving the amputated limb.